iBeacon as Presence Sensor

[fignark (Carter Chamberlain)]

I apologize if this is in under a different thread, but I’ve done a fair amount of searching and can’t find anything that fits my specific question. I am VERY new to the SmartThings community so it may be something obvious that I just am not seeing. I have my and my wife’s phones set as presence sensors. They work well enough for the purposes I have. What I would like to do is use a RadBeacon Dot (https://store.radiusnetworks.com/products/radbeacon-dot) as another sensor in the same way. Meaning, I don’t want to leave the Dot stationary at the house broadcasting, I want to be able to remove it from the house and then my hub realize when it’s present again.

My goal is to take the Dot which is small, self-powered, and with a bit of modification can be pretty water resistant and affix in some manner to my dog’s collar so the hub knows a difference in state between a weekday when I’m not there but dog is (keep heat a bit higher, turn music on for her for background noise after we leave, etc.) vs a weekend when we’re traveling to in-laws etc. and the dog comes with.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[JDRoberts]

Welcome! This is discussed in the presence FAQ. I use Ibeacons as presence sensors myself.

There’s no direct way to do this, but there are a number of different methods.

Typically you will have some beacon receiving app which can do an HTTP post, and then you will use that Web hook to integrate with SmartThings. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using the IFTTT maker channel, have it receive the webhook, and then turn on a virtual presence sensor in the SmartThings channel.

You should be able to do this with the radius networks SDK if you want to write it yourself.

I personally use the Beecon plus app, which I like, but is only available for iOS and the developer has since moved on to other projects so there is no support for it at all except the FAQs on their website. So I no longer recommend it to people just because of the lack of support, but it is the one I use.

Anyway, here is the presence FAQ, so you can start there:

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence

Presence, regardless of the device you use, is one of those features that works great for some people, not at all for other people, and is randomly flaky for still others. It’s very much affected by local conditions. So some people will find that phone presence works much better than the SmartThings-branded presence sensor. Other people will find the reverse. Still other people, myself included, find that they have to use a combination of two devices in order to get reliable presence indication. So if this feature tends to work differently for different people, where do you start? Using a Smart Phone as a Presence Indicator [image] Well, since most people who have SmartThings have a smart phone, it’s worth starting there. The following FAQ runs through the the usual troubleshooting…

[JDRoberts]

All of that said, I personally wouldn’t use it on a dog collar. It’s unlikely to be durable enough, for one thing. And the range is going to be an issue.

There’s a project report thread discussing dog collar presence which you might want to take a look at.

Dog Collar presence?

Anyone got a solution for making sure the dog is still in the yard? The ST key fob isn’t durable enough, and a FitBit seems slow and overkill, plus not really integrated with ST. I’m about to buy a couple of these beacons to try with ObyCode’s BeaconThing, so a BLE sensor might work.

The forum has a lot of great information, but to be honest, the search sucks. You will probably have an easier time finding things if you look at the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki. For example, if you look in the project report section, there’s a list for “animals” which has a lot of dog related projects.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section#Quick_Browse_Links_for_Project_Reports.2FQuestions

[BBoy486]

Are you on Android or iPhone?

[fignark (Carter Chamberlain)]

Great information, thank you so much. I will look into that.

[fignark (Carter Chamberlain)]

Wife and I both have Android devices

[BBoy486]

I think there is a workaround the JD posted.

[BBoy486]

RadBeacon and Android?

Anyone know a way to get these beacons to work on Android? BeaconThings is ios only. Also if you use these how do you adjust the area covered? BeaconThings doesn't have an area coverage I can see.